Speaking of Coltrane: Five Conversations (5)

Speaking of Coltrane: Five Conversations (5)

Michael S. Harper, emeritus professor at Brown University and first poet laureate of Rhode Island, wrote the most famous of the many Coltrane poems, “Dear John, Dear Coltrane,” a year before Coltrane’s death. It begins:

In our conversation — and in his own digressive, virtuosic, dare I say Coltranean style — Michael Harper weaves threads of racial brutality and family memory, black church music and profoundly engrained Christian doctrines of forgiveness in the North Carolina tapestry of Coltrane’s imagination. Harper’s connections with Coltrane are musical and also personal: he has been a friend for many years with Coltrane’s pianist, McCoy Tyner. But above all he is listening to Coltrane as spiritual teacher on tracks like “Alabama,” “Spiritual,” “Dear Lord,” and of course “A Love Supreme.”